To fortify the Town Car, Lincoln has employed five basic technologies. Advanced ceramic composite materials are used as a bulwark along most of the vertical surfaces and they work by breaking up bullets and dispersing their energy. Ballistic steel is used on other surfaces and supplements the ceramics in others. Ballistic transparencies make up the windows, which, at nearly twice the standard thickness, can stop rifle shots. An interwoven Aramid blanket insulates the bottom of the BPS to keep shrapnel from intruding from below. Polymer inserts allow the tires to keep rolling up to 30 miles at 30 mph after they've been shot out.
"About 300 OEM tests will be performed on Town Car BPS, including crash tests, which will make it one of the most thoroughly tested armored vehicles in the world," said Lauren Schafer, director, Lincoln Special Engineering Operations. "Additionally, we've conducted extensive ballistic testing at independent labs to validate the ballistic performance of our materials."
Despite the armor, the BPS Town Car is designed to appear to be any other Town Car clogging the Hertz lot. Because when you've been targeted (and you have been) anonymity is your only friend. The irony that you're driving a car designed to protect you from assassination that's named after someone who was assassinated is just something with which you'll have to live.
Magnificent Magnum
The merger between Chrysler and Daimler-Benz is paying off. Coming some time in the next year is a return to rear-wheel drive for Dodge and Chrysler large sedans (think Intrepid and Concorde). Much of the engineering expertise for rear-drive cars is coming from Daimler, which has never stopped building rear-drive cars. Think about it; the last Chrysler rear-drive passenger car was sold in 1989 and the last time the company designed an all-new rear-drive car was, like, 1970. Anyone who was at Chrysler then is probably in the twilight of his or her career now.
Anyhow, at January's Detroit Auto Show, Dodge showed the Magnum SRT-8, a concept car that's rumored to be an only slightly disguised version of a rear-drive sport wagon that will soon enter production. The looks are obviously influenced by Dodge trucks, and we think they're attractive in a muscular American way. More interesting is the chassis underneath that uses A-arms in front, a multilink independent system in the rear, four-wheel disc brakes, and big 20-inch wheels.
Most thrilling of all is the powerplant-a supercharged version of the 5.7L Hemi V-8 that's currently being installed in Ram pickups. The Whipple blower on this monster boosts output from the normal 345 hp up to a muscular 430 hp. Frankly we don't expect the iron-block Hemi to make it under the new rear-drivers' hoods with or without a blower. Instead we hear it will be an all-aluminum Hemi with a reduced-mass reciprocating assembly and higher compression ratio making nearly 400 hp in naturally aspirated state. However, we fully expect the Mercedes-designed five-speed automatic behind the Hemi to be there in production.
A look at the Magnum's interior shows a mix of new stuff, Dodge stuff, and Mercedes stuff. The sound and navigation system is swiped straight from the current Mercedes line (so is the turn signal stalk), the ventilation controls are pure Mopar, and that shifter and other controls look brand new.
The fact that the Magnum is a wicked cool looking wagon is a plus, but it's the rest of the machine that has us thrilled.